I have detected no mistake of moment, and begin to
hope that the important step of matrimony to which I was guided by
your example may not have been a rash experiment.
From the Rev. Mr. Casaubon to James Forth, Esq., Professor of
Etruscan, Oxford.
Dear Mr. Forth,--Your letter throws considerable light on a topic
which has long engaged my earnest attention. To my thinking, the
Cab in Cabiri = CAV, "hollow," as in cavus, and refers to the Ark
of Noah, which, of course, before the entrance of every living
thing according to his kind, must have been the largest artificial
hollow or empty space known to our Adamite ancestors. Thus the
Cabiri would answer, naturally, to the Pataeci, which, as Herodotus
tells us, were usually figured on the prows of ships. The Cabiri
or Pataeci, as children of Noah and men of the "great vessel," or
Cave-men (a wonderful anticipation of modern science), would
perpetuate the memory of Arkite circumstances, and would be
selected, as the sacred tradition faded from men's minds, as the
guides of navigation. I am sorry to seem out of harmony with your
ideas; but it is only a matter of seeming, for I have no doubt that
the Etruscan Involuti are also Arkite, and that they do not, as Max
Muller may be expected to intimate, represent the veiled or cloudy
Dawns, but rather the Arkite Patriarchs. We thus, from different
starting-places, arrive at the same goal, the Arkite solution of
Bryant.
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